and you may recall that before the war the bush administration had predicted that the war would cost about 50-$60 billion. that was the estimate from donald rumsfeld and mitch daniels and dick cheney. and, in fact, very lengthy, the top economic adviser in the bush administration was fired for saying that the war by cost up to 200 billion. -- larry lindsey. and larry subsequent wrote a book in which he argued that many of the problems that occurred later on in the war were related to the fact that no one early on was willing to confront the true potential cost in those early days. today, the u.s. has already spent $2 trillion in direct outlays for iraq. over 3 trillion if you include some of the indirect costs that will describe in some of the acts -- afghanistan caused it and at this point as we think about the difference between 50 billion, and 3 trillion, i usually remind my students about the difference between a billion and a trillion, because they kind of sound the same. just sort of thinking about it, we know that if you had a million, 1000-dollar bills stacked up on the table